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Friday, March 29, 2013

The Only Thing Worse is the Cure, Finale

Ladies and Gentlemen, step onto this platform and experience
the last miracle of the Modern Age! I tell you that I was born with one lung and
a withered leg, yet today I stand as tall before you and with as deep a voice
as any among us. You must be asking yourselves: why is he so firm for an
invalid?

I answer you: it is the dust I have for sale in these here
jars. Take a pinch of it in your tea. Wrap it with your tobacco, or rub it into
your gums. It works in all mysterious ways, Ladies and Gentlemen, and I have
made it affordable because miracles ought to be affordable. You can taste the
quality.

Who would sample these wares? The first miracle is free.
Yes, yes, the Young Madame has the intrepid spirit, and may I say, that is a
distinguished parasol. Here you are. Yes, into the gums, or past them, whatever
is your fancy.

There we are. And how does the Young Madame feel?

What’s that?

Invigorated!

Do the ashes not possess a certain savoriness? Yes? Maybe?
You say…?

A yearning! Yes, I like that. The Young Madame is right –
these invigorating ashes do possess a certain yearning! That is the very verb
that stirred my being when I first crossed them, and you all must be asking
yourselves: from whence did this Gentleman retrieve his miracle ashes?

I was traveling along the coast for mercantile industry when
I spied a thousand ribbons of smoke rising to the heavens, and followed them
unto a peculiar beach, upon which there lay the wreckage of a flock of ships. A
veritable flock, I tell you. Not one, nor two – fifteen if there were five, all
mashed up together among the shoals. What a storm must have squalled those men,
what holy war at sea, I dare not imagine, and naught to help them save an
island with a few shanties offshore, and it with no lighthouse. You’d think
such a colony would want to help sailors in such need.

Now these ribbons of smoke had not emanated from the ruined
ships. So afeared of another war in these plagued times, I hesitated upon the
beach and trampled a fine suit of clothes. Then another. Another, and another –
perhaps several hundred pairs of shirts and pantaloons, and guns as any nation
would envy, all splayed out as though an army had mounted there, and decided to
call off its war, instead stripping its uniforms in favor of a swim. This
militia of fashion formed a crescent around the beach, leaving a single bald patch,
where there lay a simple sack cloth, as a monk might wear. It was pierced at
least thrice with shot, though worry not, for there was no blood. In its place?

For within the sack cloth, I took a handful of ash, and lo,
I had never breathed so painlessly in my life as when I held it. The two
juniors I had with me also claimed to have lost acute tooth pain an amorous predilections,
and they have taken more jars of these ashes for sale in the north, and perhaps
to Jerusalem. Smelling
char about the sack cloth and the sailor uniforms, we set about examining them,
and found indeed all those ribbons of smoke had risen from this spot, and that such
miracle ash was deposited within the collar of every uniform on the beach.

Ladies and gentlemen, my news may disturb, yet it is
indisputable: the Rapture had come upon us, and few were called. Those few gave
unto us one sweet parting gift, a gift which grants health that you have
witnessed both in myself, and in this Young Madame who, as you can see and she
can attest, has improved in constitution during the brevity of my tale. They
possess, as she called it, that certain yearning. That we were not summoned
does not mean we are forsaken, for these ashes can be the path to a better
life. And I am selling them by the tenth-pound. Now what do you offer?

I suppose it’s human nature to want to see horrible things- that’s what causes rubbernecking and crowds around caution tape. But damned if we’re not desperate to sneak a peak at the action and find out what caused the carnage we glimpse.

I had the same reaction to this- I could see the beach, the clothes filled with ashes, our MC’s robe strewn amoung the rest and I felt so… angry. My mind is racing with “What happened?!? Noooo!”

It’s like Gettysburg- that field used to be crowded with cannonballs and musket bullets and now there’s nothing but land because all the metal has been pilfered and sold to tourists.

So I guess it is the most fitting end, because it’s the most real. But that doesn’t mean I don’t feel cheated.

I think I'm going to be thinking about this one for a while, but that's probably a good thing because I want to unpack it and understand it more. Part of me hopes it was the comeuppance for the 'healthy' folk who waged war on the Young Master. But you nailed the voice of the carnival barker in this one.

Giving the final voice to a carnie, when the conclusion comes in such a manner, a dark and wrapped in mystery one, allowing the story of the Young Master to remain a myth and his last appereance, his last gift (or not) to be presented by his ashes..I just can't. It's fabulous. This serial was a brillaint idea and I'm so glad you decided to extend it. I'm going to spend a little time going through it. A re-read from part 1!

Just caught up on the last couple parts. The entire thing now strikes me as a very Tom Stoppard-esque parody, one of some biblical stories rather than Shakespeare. But I'm not knowledgeable enough to attempt any further explanation. Very enjoyable, though, and I particularly enjoyed this final character selling ashes.